مرکز منطقه ای اطلاع رساني علوم و فناوري - The Ways Turkish Teacher Candidates Use to Improve Thinking in Providing Reason in an Argumentative Text

Abstract :

Argumentative text is to convince the reader to an opinion on the basis of reasons by refuting the counter-opinion. This structure consists of two main sections, including the main and the auxiliary elements. The main elements constitute data, argument, counter argument and conclusion. Auxiliary elements of the structure are, however, the support reason and the refuting reason. Reasons are the language units that strengthen the author s point of view. These language units show us how an argument can be successfully defended against the possible attack and how the counter argument can be refuted (Eemeren Grootendorst, 2004). This study aims to determine the ways to improve thinking used by the Turkish teacher candidates in their reasons in argumentative texts. The study was designed in descriptive survey model among the qualitative research techniques. The study population was composed of a total of 100 students studying at the 3^rd and 4th year of Turkish Language Teaching Department in Mustafa Kemal University. In collecting the data, the Argumentative Writing Text Form developed by the researcher, was employed. In the analysis of the data, the reasons established for the texts obtained by using the content analysis method, were classified separately as the support and the refuting reasons. Then, the ways to improve thinking used to establish these reasons were identified and presented in sample texts. These results were then presented in tables with their frequency (f) and percent (%) values. As a result of this study, the distribution of the ways to improve thinking used in argumentative text by the support reasons is as follows: explanation (38.91%), exemplification (23.15%), comparison (15.27%), analogy (12.31%), utilization of antagonism (6.89%), giving evidence (3.44%) and utilization of numerical data (0%). On the other hand, its distribution by the refuting reasons is as follows: explanation (29.29%), exemplification (25.25%), comparison (23.23%), analogy (9.09%), utilization of antagonism (12.12%), utilization of numerical data (1.01%) andgiving evidence (0%).